


Cold Case

by Im_The_Doctor (Bofur1)



Series: The Thinker, The Feeler [6]
Category: Transformers: Rescue Bots
Genre: Arguing, Caring, Cold Weather, Comrades, Friendship, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, Hospitalization, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Locked In, Making Up, Missions Gone Wrong, Non-Sexual Bondage, Partnership, Pre-Earth Transformers, Trapped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 15:05:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8805526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bofur1/pseuds/Im_The_Doctor
Summary: When one of their missions goes awry, Heatwave and Chase are captured and locked in a cryogenics warehouse. With the cold quickly bearing down on them, Heatwave suggests they make up for lost time.





	

“This is all your fault, Chase! You know that, right?”

From immediately behind the firemech, his partner ex-vented tersely before pointing out, “On the c-contrary, Heatwave, if you hadn’t followed me in here, you would have been able t-to leave unhindered and summon help.”

“Well, we’ve been through this before and if I’m not mistaken, you’re the one who t-told me we should always go into a rescue with a partner! _I_ was supposed to be the help!”

“Allow me to rephrase: if you hadn’t followed me, you would have been able to summon help that is actually…helpful.”

Ignoring the sting of hurt at the words in favor of the sting of their surroundings, Heatwave retorted, “Well, it was two against one! You think I would’ve just left you on your own? You think I _should’ve?_ Maybe if I had, you wouldn’t have anyone but yourself to blame for being captured!”

“I am _not_ blaming you,” Chase spoke over him. “I’m simply stating facts. You’ve made it clear many times that you want me to be completely honest with you, Heatwave. The fact of the matter is that I’m not at fault.”

“Well, maybe if you had gone with my original suggestion of flushing them _out_ of the warehouse first, we could’ve taken it where it was warmer!” Not waiting for Chase’s response, Heatwave growled wordlessly, jerking his wrists in vain against the stasis cuffs twisting his arms behind his back. Faintly he could feel Chase’s fingertips—only slightly warmer than Heatwave’s and even then edged in frost—groping blindly, trying to help, but the second pair of cuffs on him kept him from doing much good.

Since they were back to back, Heatwave was sure Chase could feel the tense shivers passing through him. He hoped not. It was already humiliating enough that Chase was right; Heatwave had _technically_ been the one who had gotten them into this mess. He had rushed right into Chase’s tense standoff with a pair of nitrogen thieves and in the distraction, they had managed to overpower the policemech. Now they were long gone, leaving the Rescue Bots securely locked in the biting temperatures of the cryogenics warehouse.

Digging his heelstruts into the warehouse floor in an attempt to control his body’s helpless twitching, Heatwave ventured uneasily, “So…I take it this means you didn’t happen to call for backup before they jammed our comms…”

“I did, as per our p-protocols, but I’m uncertain as to how long it will t-take for backup to arrive. This crime s-spree has most of the Rescue Bots engaged elsewhere,” Chase stated, his vocals crisp and detached in the way that meant he was wondering if he should be more reassuring, but the cold weariness in his EM field rang just as soundly: he didn’t feel up to giving the effort.

“Well, at least you’re honest. I knew there was a reason I wanted you to be,” Heatwave muttered, answering his friend’s unasked question. “It’s…it’s not like we’re going anywhere.” There was a brief flutter of Chase’s vents at that, but the expected sound of his distinctive almost-laugh stalled, followed instead by a winded cough.

“How’s your core temperature?” Heatwave asked instinctively. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but keeping appraised of his companion’s status was more important than personal discomfort.

“Low. How is yours?” Chase expertly dodged the question.

“Low,” Heatwave mimicked, turning his helm to glower over his shoulder. His neck wasn’t cooperating to its full potential, so he faced front and glared at their surroundings instead.

The walls around them were drenched in frost, some still liquid, some already clinging frozen, but all of it blended into a pale white and gray mass that eventually hurt his optics to look at. He blinked a few times, shook his helm stiffly and then squirmed again. Stasis cuffs were meant to immobilize prisoners completely, but he was fairly sure the criminals had secured them wrong. The effects weren’t as potent, but even so, he couldn’t break out of them. Worse, his cuffs were magnetized to Chase’s, so they couldn’t pull away from each other to attempt standing.

“There has to be something we can do!” he snapped, frustrated. Chase’s EM field flickered wordlessly in response to his tone and Heatwave paused, hoping his own field told Chase that he wasn’t angry with him. He wasn’t going to pretend he wasn’t angry, though; anger kept his spark running hot when the rest of his systems were not. He could feel some of his nervecircuits prickling and then falling numb and after another klik or two, he flexed his fingers, brushing them against his friend’s. “Chase…”

Chase must have read something in his tone; his acknowledgement was brief but urgent. “What is it?”

Pursing his lips, Heatwave forced his fingers to twitch a second time. “I can’t feel ’em,” he admitted in a lower voice.

To his surprise, Chase swore quite straightforwardly and wriggled, scooting his aft forward and leaning far back to grab Heatwave’s hands, rubbing them as best he could at the awkward angle. “Can you feel them now?” he would ask periodically, increasingly frustrated with the lack of results. “Blast.”

“S’fine,” Heatwave grunted, clenching his hands into loose fists. From the tightening of his grip, meager as it was, Chase seemed like he might protest, so Heatwave reversed their roles, giving his own go at sparking a little circulation in Chase’s shaking fingers. Eventually it ended in the same failure and, trying to temper his stammering, the firemech repeated fiercely, “It’s fine. We’re going to be _fine_.”

Chase didn’t object to that, at least not verbally; Heatwave could sense the string of “logical” arguments he was holding back. They stayed quiet for several minutes, during which the chills began again, lancing through Heatwave’s joints, and before he realized what he was doing, he had all but slumped against his partner, bumping his backstrut with a dull _clunk_.

Humming questioningly, Chase stirred at the contact, setting off a round of shivers from them both. This time Heatwave was alarmed to discover that neither of them could stop. Lowering his helm, he ex-vented, watching the puff of air hover eerily before swirling away from him, and then he shuttered his optics tightly as his vision blurred.

“Heatwave…?”

“Yeah,” he acknowledged hollowly.

“What if we aren’t f-fine?”

All of Chase’s arguments had been summed up into one quiet question, direct, inescapable. Oh, Heatwave _hated_ it when he did that. Automatically he suppressed the temptation to share this concern and instead did his best to brush it off. “You worried, Chase? That doesn’t happen often.”

“You’d be s-surprised,” was Chase’s response, which _was_ surprising, but the policemech went on before Heatwave could answer. “I mean it. Wh—What if backup d-doesn’t arrive qu-quickly enough?”

Vaguely Heatwave became aware that Chase was stuttering more prominently than before, but he shoved that aside and maintained his blasé dismissals, forced a small laugh with a sharp edge. “Then I’ll t-take it up with Dispatch. They told us to come here.”

“T-True.”

Chase’s agreement made Heatwave think for a klik. _So now we’re shifting the blame again?_ Reluctantly he half-glanced over his shoulder, cleared his throat and began, “I didn’t…mean what I said, y’know. Wasn’t your fault. I distracted you…got us here.” Grimacing, he concluded, “I guess I _wasn’t_ helpful, j-just like you said.”

“M-Making mistakes is i-inevitable,” Chase allowed, flustered by Heatwave’s skirting apology. “My mistake was i-implying that _either_ of us was at f-fault.”

“Occupational hazard,” Heatwave concurred, almost smiling despite their situation.

The relief of knowing he and Chase weren’t at odds didn’t last long, though, and it didn’t combat the cold. More time passed in frozen silence, in which Heatwave’s shivering intensified to the point where it felt like he was shaking Chase as well; his internals were cramping, his olfactory sensor, audials, and hands were almost completely numb, and he didn’t dare check his chronometer to see how long it had been. The warning popups from his core temperature were giving him enough information to make a perfectly fine guess.

As he shifted in a vain attempt to stay active or change some aspect of their problem, Heatwave realized that his companion’s EM field had fallen lax. This shouldn’t be too worrying—it was Chase, after all, and his EM field only oscillated a little at its best—but this time Heatwave just _knew_. “Don’t!” he burst out, using what strength he could gather to elbow his partner in the back. “Wake up!”

To his relief, Chase let out a shivering ex-vent. “Hmm?”

“Ch-Chase…y’need to keep t-talking,” Heatwave muttered gruffly through an unexpected wave of dizziness.

“About…?”

“Anything.” This prompt hung on empty air and Heatwave’s chest locked up from the cold and repressed fear as he spat, “Hate the cold. _Always_ have. S’the…the reason I became a f-firemech.”

It took Chase a full minute to answer, but Heatwave tried desperately to be patient because Chase had been in here longer than he had. “Always b-believed it was because it f-fit your name,” he commented at last, forming the words tiredly but deliberately.

Dragging numb, quivery legs toward his chest, Heatwave pressed his face against the frost-glazed metal and then did his best to speak through them; he didn’t take kindly to weakness, especially his own. “Sire…Airtrack…worked in a place like this. Said he named me Heatwave cos whenever he came home, I warmed his spark. H’was too s-sentimental.” The thought of his sire was a warm, prickly ache, fighting the battle with his core temperature but losing. “Yours?” he asked in a word, vents hitching.

“M’s-sire was Transit an’ C-Carrier was Moral,” Chase managed, his words uncharacteristically slurred. “A p-private guard an’ a j-judge. They named me Chase for obv’ous re…reasons.”

Heatwave paused, processing the words carefully. His mind, like the rest of his systems, felt slower than usual. “May be a bad time t’be asking about c-creators,” he murmured, swallowing hard. “Freezer’s not the best place…We should talk more. Don’know much about your past. Never asked…”

“True, but…s’alright.” Chase’s light nudge to Heatwave’s hand was almost affectionate, but his following mumble rang of regret. “I n-never asked either. Wish I had sooner. Could’ve had more time…”

“Backup’s gonna get us out’ve here,” Heatwave insisted again, frowning as his vocalizer ran his words together like Chase’s; he sounded like he was overcharged. “An’ when they do, we’ll go t’the medics. S’warm there.”

Chase hummed in delighted agreement at that prospect. “Don’ feel cold an’more…not even here…”

Before Heatwave could react to that comment, he felt him slump all at once, sliding lower as Heatwave tried to push him back up, but his own limbs were too frozen to do anything but shift slightly. He focused on forming words, but when he opened his mouth, they refused to be pressed out. His helm swam, his vision hazed out, and he clenched his jaw tightly to ride out the world suddenly tilting. Faintly he heard a door banging open somewhere before the cold faded, his shivering eased to a stop and everything dissolved into black.

—

When Heatwave came around, it was slow and reluctant. His optics seemed welded shut, too heavy to open despite his drift into awareness, and there was a gentle throb in his helm that made him grumble and wonder if he’d been talked into getting overcharged. If so, this was his punishment. Overall he felt…achy, but warm.

To dispel some of the worsening pain through his body, particularly his extremities, he shifted, working energon toward them. He tried to roll over and go back into recharge but cringed back at once when his movements created a sharp discomfort in his arm. Forcing his optics open, he frowned at the source, which turned out to be an IV tube.

That was when he remembered everything that had happened in the cryogenics warehouse and he sat up abruptly, wincing as the aching in his helm increased tenfold at the action. He reached over and pulled on the IV, making the machinery beside him start beeping, and just as he swung his legs over the side of the berth, Chase appeared in the doorway.

“Heatwave!” he gasped, looking nothing less than thrilled. It was a foreign look but not unpleasant and Heatwave couldn’t help but grin back.

“So you’re already up and about…thank Primus for that.”

Chase blinked, tilting his helm slightly. Trying for an unfamiliar smile, he ventured, “Indeed. I was released from medical custody not too long ago.”

“Then why are you still here?”

The smile morphed into a frown before it could fully emerge as Chase tilted his helm in the opposite direction. “Well…is it not obvious? I was concerned for you too, Heatwave—”

“You mind giving me a hand with this?” Oblivious to Chase’s words, the firemech tugged on the IV a second time with the same lack of results. “Hurry, a medic might be coming to shut up this machine.”

Chase glanced at said machinery, which continued its incessant beeping, and then shook his helm in a mix of bafflement and disapproval. “Do you think you’re going somewhere?”

“Yeah: out,” Heatwave stated bluntly, tugging on the IV again and grimacing. “Where have _you_ been?” At the strangely wary look on Chase’s face, Heatwave raised his eyebrows and repeated the question.

His partner hesitated for another klik or two, seeming to weigh the pros and cons of answering, and finally settled for the pros, announcing in an unreadable tone, “I was taking up a matter with Dispatch.”

“Oh.” Heatwave wasn’t sure what else to say to that, but he felt another grin tugging at his face. “I guess you beat me to it.”

Something almost haughty sparked in Chase’s optics. “Then, since you now have no business to attend to outside the hospital, I trust you’ll be content to stay here and rest?”

Heatwave considered for a minute, wondering how quickly Chase might be able to drag him back if he bolted. Then he remembered the result of all of their race courses at the Academy and grudgingly pulled his legs back onto the berth. Maintaining a small rebellion, he _didn’t_ lie back down as he scoffed, “Your hints aren’t exactly subtle, Chase. I don’t like hospitals. I’ve never liked them—not since I was a sparkling—and I never will.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that about you.” Chase tried for the tentative smile again, knitting his fingers together behind his back. “Perhaps, since you mentioned we should discuss our pasts more frequently, you’d care to tell me about it?”

Heatwave froze, already starting to regret bringing it up. “Uh, that’s—that’s something else about me,” he stammered. “Something you probably already know: I, uh, don’t like _sharing time_.” Even as he was saying it, however, Chase was pulling a chair around the side of the berth and perching on it, hands folded on his knees, looking eager, expectant, even attentive. Heatwave stared at him. “Are you serious? I mean—you actually _want_ to hear about it?”

“I don’t believe I would have asked if I didn’t want to listen,” Chase pointed out. “Through our partnership, when there was something new to learn about me—or something to teach—you’ve given me your utmost attention. I would think that you deserve the same.” The smile finally made its debut and Heatwave was surprised by it, but not as surprised as he was at himself as he realized how touched he was by the attention.

“Okay…” he agreed cautiously. “Well…my disliking hospitals, that’s another reason why I became a firemech. A firemech who would eventually become my mentor visited me while I was in one, right after he rescued me from a fire _I_ had started.” Chase reeled back in his seat slightly and Heatwave held up a hand. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Remember how I said I hate the cold? I had lit a flare to keep warm during an acid rainstorm. There was a leak in the ceiling, I got the flare too close to the acid…well, you can guess the rest. Anyway, the point is that Inferno came to the hospital when I was recovering and he was what inspired me to do what he did.”

Chase took some time to process this—long enough that Heatwave started to get flustered and defensive—and then his smile widened. “As your partner, I’m quite pleased you did so.”

Heatwave’s defensiveness dissolved, enough that he settled back more comfortably on the berth. “Yeah,” he chuckled, clasping Chase’s hand affectionately. “Me too.”


End file.
